Bump & Grind for Jesus

Gary R. Weaver on Redeeming the Culture

So here I am, amidst a “standing room only” crowd in a large, darkened
hall, the only light issuing from spotlights trained on the empty stage. The
act is announced, and a dozen or more twentyish women in snug-fitting denim
and knit fabric take the stage. They have only a few seconds to form a line
before the loud rock soundtrack envelopes the room with its pounding drums,
pulsating bass, and largely inscrutable vocals.

On musical cue, the performers begin strutting about the stage, jumping, twisting,
bending, and waving, mostly in coordinated fashion. Soon they turn their backs
to the audience, bend slightly so as to force their backsides to protrude toward
us, and proceed to swivel and shimmy their buttocks quite sensually, in the
fashion of Elvis (for you oldsters) or hip-hop “booty” dancing (for
you youngsters). Then it’s on to similar hip swiveling seen from the front,
along with slowly gyrating legs, heads thrown back, arms outstretched, and so
on.

The audience sometimes expresses its appreciation—typically with applause,
occasionally with a catcall or a hoot. You get the picture, so I needn’t
go on, but there is one more important detail: The soundtrack’s inscrutability
occasionally breaks for a reasonably clear shout of “Praise God,”
whereupon the dancers all point a finger to the ceiling and put a smile on their
faces.

You see, I’m not at a Las Vegas show, MTV taping, or worse, but attending
chapel at a respected Christian college, and the standing-room-only crowd constitutes
most of the student body. Bump and grind for Jesus!

A First Reaction

My first reaction in situations like this is to think frantically: “Where
are the grownups?” But the grownups—specifically, a college staff
person who looked to be in his forties—not only introduced the student
dance group but enthusiastically pressed the crowd for a “rousing hand
of applause” upon the conclusion of the group’s routine. The crowd
(large, but largely and, I was told, typically devoid of faculty) responded
as requested, especially the male students, I thought—the women were somewhat
more subdued in their appreciation.

The ceremonies then moved on to the Bible passage for the day, which itself
was followed by applause. (Is Bible reading now perceived as entertainment?)
Then came the message based on the reading. It was offered by someone from outside
the United States—I’d have loved to know his reaction to the “opening
act,” an act that probably didn’t prepare the crowd to receive his
rather sober message.

I found the whole setting more than incongruous. My son, who is in his late
teens and was traveling with me on this occasion, had a simpler description:
“It was gross.”

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to what usually is
called liturgical dance, I as often as not “don’t get it.”
On those rare occasions when a bit of liturgical dance occurs in my Lutheran
church, perhaps in the context of a special service or program, I try hard to
grasp it, though my effort sometimes fails. But I’m willing to grant that
it might be my fault and that I shouldn’t criticize or complain without
first learning the kinetic language of the dance (which is to say something
akin to what I say to people who complain that they are befuddled by the Catholic
Liturgy).

But there’s a bit of a difference, I think, between liturgical dance done
by my rather conventional Lutherans (e.g., Mary, in flowing robes, dancing out
the joy spoken in the Magnificat) and this Christian college chapel. In the
latter, the kinetic language seems pretty clear, and it’s mostly the language
of MTV, Las Vegas, or maybe even an “exotic dancer” bar in a seedy
part of town.

Moreover, the problem was not just an isolated event at this college, on this
one day. I witnessed a permanent, organized group at this particular school.
I queried a friend who teaches at another well-known Christian college and was
advised that his institution also has such a group. Thankfully, he noted, they’re
not allowed in chapel—yet—but they do regular performances on campus
for audiences that are almost entirely male. If they really were using a language
of liturgical dance, and used it well enough to attract others to rejoice in
their dance of praise, wouldn’t women attend also?

So do we need a historian or social critic to write about “the opening
of the Evangelical libido” just as Mark Noll has described the closing
of Evangelical minds? Admittedly, my middle-aged and generally “old fogey”
attitudes surely frame my interpretation of events like this. But some like-minded
old fogey at the college perhaps should tell these women that their intended
dance of praise might send a very mixed message.

But just what are the intentions? What is going on here? Or, put more humbly,
what am I, in my benighted or corrupted state, missing or misinterpreting in
the chapel program at this college that, in most other respects, I hold in high
esteem? (Indeed, it’s because I generally hold this college in high esteem
that I’d rather not identify it, lest its many good works be tainted or
undermined by the particular event under review. In fact, I’d be happy
to send my children there, albeit suitably warned about certain chapels and
the theology undergirding them.)

Explaining Chapel

It won’t do to explain bump-and-grind chapel in purely pragmatic, utilitarian
terms (i.e., gyrating women increase male attendance at chapel). After all,
chapel is required at this school: no chapel, no diploma. Moreover, what about
the males, who, like my son (“It was gross”), are a little concerned
about doing things decently and in good order? And what do the other women think
of this display?

One would hope that even the most fervent proponents of entertainment evangelism
would be unlikely to pander so boldly as this, either to others or to themselves.
No, if a college wants a less embarrassing way to keep males happy in chapel,
there probably are enough pious athletic stars and coaches available.

So perhaps I am missing a radical liberationist issue, i.e., that women (or
anyone else, for that matter) should be free to use their sexuality to glorify
God, and that any “problem” I have with that reflects my enculturation
into and perpetuation of the norms of an oppressive and repressive patriarchal
culture. In short, “get over it, old fogey.”

If this were, mirabile dictu, required chapel at what we in the business
refer to as “an elite East Coast private university,” I would not
be too surprised, and we could proceed to discuss the merits and demerits of
this outlook. But it is not an elite East Coast private university; it is an
institution full of mostly middle-American, middle-class, “family values”
people who, one suspects, would take very seriously Levitical requirements that
one not place a stumbling block before one’s brother. Sociologically,
this explanation just doesn’t fit.

Now this school, like many other Christian colleges, does have a multicultural
component in its curriculum, showing sensitivity to and awareness of the Church
and its work in different cultures around the world. So could a “bump
and grind” chapel simply reflect sensitivity to the culture of many (or
even just a few) students? Again, this seems too much of a stretch. The culture
reflected by bump-and-grind is a popular culture manufactured by a media/entertainment
complex, rather than an indigenous folk culture. Since when did multicultural
sensitivity, even sensitivity to various American subcultures, mean taking manufactured
mass culture as given?

So let us try some theology. Perhaps they are trying to engage, transform, and
redeem the culture. Perhaps I witnessed the work of “Christ the transformer
of MTV culture,” as H. Richard Niebuhr might have put it had he been able
to join me this morning.

But merely sticking “praise God” in the midst of an activity doesn’t
seem quite what Niebuhr had in mind, nor can I envision Calvin or Luther viewing
the idea of Christian vocation in such simplistic fashion. Bonhoeffer worried
about cheap grace; this looks like cheap culture transformation.

Now, I have often had people tell me that (for example) Luther used “drinking
songs” as hymn tunes, so why not apply Christian content to other worldly
entertainments? But this is just dubious history in the service of popular culture.
Luther’s appropriation of secular tunes constituted a miniscule portion
of his overall musical effort, and—like a few other decisions of his—reflected
an expedient accommodation to circumstances.

In Reformation Germany, there just weren’t many usable new tunes for corporate
worship in the vernacular. So tavern songs might be used in a pinch, but with
the aim of moving on to music composed by and for the church, and with a careful
eye as to whether the conventional implications of the form of the music might
conflict with the sacred intent of the hymnody.

Thus, some tavern tunes might pass muster as an expedient, but not every tavern
tune is admissible. Would Luther have set the words of “A Mighty Fortress”
to the tune of “The Priest of Kalenburg” or “Dietrich of Berne,”
two popular songs against which he railed in a sermon on Ephesians 5? Not likely.

Pious Intentions Not Enough

More generally: Form is not without content; the medium is at least part of
the message, to borrow from Marshall McLuhan. And so this Christian college
chapel left me with a sense of having witnessed a profound contradiction between
form (MTV/Las Vegas/exotic dancer) and intended content (“Praise God!”).

But aren’t good intentions enough? Is it not sufficient that this group
of students, and their sponsors, sincerely intended their actions to bring praise
and honor to God, just as much as, say, J. S. Bach intended his music to
glorify God?

I am quite willing to grant the good intentions, but to insist that good intentions
are enough seems too close to one or another ancient and modern heresy. Saying
that it is my own private thoughts and intentions that determine the character
of my Christian life at least flirts with Gnostic thinking and other “special,”
non-catholic revelations. It also risks a Manichean rejection of the corporeal
world as a proper realm of divine, salvific activity, and perhaps even a dichotomizing
of the blatantly corporeal narrative of the Old Testament from a supposedly
more “spiritual” and thus private New Testament gospel of salvation.

Yet this inward and personal understanding of Christianity is characteristic
of much contemporary Protestantism, both Evangelical and mainline. Methodist
theologian Stanley Hauerwas has observed that post-Enlightenment Protestantism
is unusual in Christian history for assuming that being a Christian reduces
to questions of one’s state of mind, whether those questions be matters
of confessional doctrine or Evangelical decisions to “accept Jesus Christ
as my personal savior.”

Lutheran theologian David Yeago (writing in the Christmas 2000 issue of Lutheran
Forum) more generally refers to this tendency as “the disembodiment
of Christianity,” and observes how starkly it contrasts with the “dense
corporeality of earlier forms of Christianity.” In that earlier, more
corporeal Christianity, creation is not sanctified by good intentions and pious
thoughts (“cheerleading for Jesus,” an acquaintance of mine calls
it), but by “the public presence of a bodily people, [drawing] created
things into new patterns of usage within a distinctive corporate way of life.”

In short, perhaps the dancers were proclaiming that their godly intentions are
sufficient to redeem all things. But that is, in the end, an American, or more
generally, modern Western message quite at odds with the Church’s message
over the ages. By recognizing it, however, we can better understand how well-intentioned
persons can be found bumping and grinding for Jesus. Denying the corporeality
of the faith makes it that much easier to adopt the debased corporeality of
the fallen.

Gary R. Weaver is a faculty member at the University
of Delaware (though he also has served as operator of the world’s longest
railroad drawbridge). He holds Ph.D. degrees in philosophy and business administration.
He and his wife June have two children, Evan and Priscilla.

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